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The hunt for the beautiful things in life, a tall girl's tale

Tag Archives: roommate

After a heated two hour intermission between church and a relaxing Sunday afternoon, my two roommates and I dropped off our borrowed car and walked triumphantly across the scorching pavement to our apartment with our new cable modem and 343 Mb/s router burning in our spoon-ringed hands.

The Martha Stewart paper lanterns sway gently in the breeze as the door opened into our bright white living room. I inhaled strength from the air conditioning and got to work. Twenty pain free minutes passed and we had Wifi. Turns out even a doodle-less Google looks unspeakably glorious after several days of “Server not found.” Crisis averted, and status quo replaced, I began surveying the apartment with new eyes as the roomies buzzed busily away on dinner in the kitchen.

An eager to please walnut bookshelf on the left side of the desk holds the required basic office supplies and chick flicks so that its partner on the right has room for the desired cookbooks and novels. Spots of light hit the room for a moment and shoot the eye over to kinky gold chain slinking its way up the wall until it reaches the kitschy pink and gold chandelier that demands a smile from the student at the second desk, so damn cheery that for a moment I think I saw a student smiling in spite of their grim reflection in the shiny black desk top. Across the wall, a burgundy cello case carries on a much quieter conversation with the unnamed couple dancing in the mist of an elegant gold frame. Just as I started to wonder again who the couple was and why they were dancing in the fog, the intimate scene was pleasantly interrupted with the sound of tonight’s fresh chicken breasts heating up the soft blue and white kitchen.

For the first time in my life I understood what Debby Reynolds must have felt just before she popped out of that birthday cake in Singing in the Rain.

And the icing on my cake was how earnestly, like kids on a playground comparing the lost rings and smooth rocks they’ve found between the wood chips, my foodie roommates compared notes on marinades while they shucked sweet corn.

In the midst of this colorful finery, there was positively nothing to do but plop on to the tweedy cream couch cushions and snooze underneath Grandma Gerty’s diamond patchwork quilt and the lovingly arranged wall of our personally crafted decor.

After three days of unpacking, decorating, adjusting, shopping, and re-docorating, apartment 311 is in full bloom.